The British Education system....to eezy too pass exams these days?

[Pert_UK]

Given the furore over this year's A-level results I wondered what people thought about the English / British exam system.

Personally I couldn't believe it when they decided to adopt the Spinal Tap method of GCSE grading....

"Why don't you just make it harder to get a grade A?"
"But these grades go up to A*!"

What a complete waste of everybody's time, although I suppose I have to concede that if they'd just admitted that GCSE's had got farsically easy and they had to "revalue" them, the government would have had to announce that pre-1995 GCSE grade A's were worth less than post-1995 A's.....Which doesn't make sense either.

When I did A-levels (around 1993 I think) there was a HUGE gap between (for example) GCSE maths and A-level maths, and the teachers complained that they had to spend the first 6 months of A-level tuition bringing students up to the old O-level standard before they could move on.

And now universities and employers are saying that so many people get a bagfull of A grades at A-level that they can't tell who's a genius and who's just plain bloody clever, so we've got to re-value the whole system again......

Personally I think it was a mistake to move from relative marking. In the old days (before my time) A-level papers would be marked, and then examination boards would look at the distribution of marks across all entrants before deciding on what mark was required for each grade. In other words, a Grade A showed that you had done significantly better than the majority of your peers. That way, even if the exams became easier and easier the Grading was still subject to a level of "moderation" or "normalisation", i.e. 90% in the exam wasn't good enough for an A, you had to do better than 90% of people who took the exam.

IMHO we seem to have fallen into the trap of insisting that nobody loses, and that just means that winning is meaningless. I can remember doing GCSEs and at that time a friend of mine wasn't even entered for a single exam on the basis that he didn't stand a chance of scraping a pass in any of them. These days I suspect he'd be given 5 passes and encouraged to try for university, wasting his time and everyone elses.........

What do people think? I hope I haven't come across as a dreadful snob........

:evilgrin:

P.

[Guy_Montag]

1. I agree...

with just about everything that you've said.

I would like to add MHTW (my humble tuppence worth) and say I was educated under the Scottish system which used to be a much broader, shallower education. I sat 7 Standard gardes (GCSE) in my 4th year, 5 Highers in my 5th year, 1 Higher & 3 CSYS (Certificate of Sith Year Studies - Jedi Acadamy don't you know).

At the end of that I had done equivelent to A level Maths & Chemistry (CSYS) and much more English, French, physics & computing than I would have done for GCSE. Making me a more rounded individual than any English(wo)man.

I had an extra year at university (like everyone at Scottish universities) and my university courses gave me the depth I needed in my chosen subject.

[Pert_UK]

2. I deliberately didn't criticise the Scottish system....

as apparently it's a shitload better than the English system.

It pisses me off that the system is being dragged further and further down....

GCSEs were blatantly a dumbed-down O-level, and although a change was required they went too far.

Then, of course, there was too much of a gap between GCSE and A-levels, so A-levels had to become easier to enable "normal" people to make the transition.

Then polytechnics (worthy and noble institutions) were suddenly turned into universities, losing the useful distinction between academia and vocational studies. Now anyone with 2 bare passes at A-level could get into university and get funds, when surely somebody who can only pass 2 A-levels should either re-sit them or be told that their future lies outside academia.

Now we're stuck with a shortage of skilled manual workers because the government has insisted on sending too many non-academic, non-achievers into higher/further education rather than encouraging a vocational route. These people emerge from sub-standard institutions with worthless degrees and are worse off than if they'd been working their way up a business for the previous 3 or 4 years.

What's the fucking point in a government setting targets for university intake, rather than acknowledging that many people aren't academic? All you do is create huge costs and force/encourage less able or non-academic people into inappropriate courses at poor universities, and employers have to work out whether a First from the University of Central Cambridgeshire is better than a 2:2 from Liverpool......

RANT!!!!!

BTW - I distinctly recall a GCSE Computer Studies question on my paper...

"Which of the following is not an input device:

A - mouse B - keyboard C - Lightpen D - Magic Wand."

I shit you not. Dumbed down you say? This was in 1990, so where have we gone from there?

[Guy_Montag]

3. The Scottish system used to be good,

but it's been radically changed now. I have no idea what it's now like. Standard grades were a joke though. They were marked 7 to 1 (1 being best). There were three papers, foundation, general & credit. You sat two papers; general and one other.

I hope you're following this.

Credit allowed you to get a 1 or 2, general 3 or 4, foundation 5 or 6, and you got a 7 for turning up (literally). This meant that a kid who appeared stupid & sat foundation & general could get at most a 3, even if they were actually brilliant.

Weird system.

'Fraid I can't argue with anything else you've written, like GCSE question.

BTW. Credit Chemistry paper (2 1/2 hours long) - I and the rest of my peers left with an hour to go. No-one sat foundation chem at my school even the "special" kids.

[Pert_UK]

4. BTW - your user name......

Is it from Farenheit 451?

I did study that book but it was a LONG time ago now.

It does sound a bit weird your system, but it makes some kind of sense...GCSE is a bit similar. Some papers were divided into sections A - E, with each section representing the knowledge/skills required to achieve that grade. If you'd been predicted a C the standard instruction was to complete the C section, and then do the B (in case you managed a good performance on the day) and the D (in case you stuffed it). Personally, I did the A first then worked backwards through the paper all the way to E - they gave you whichever grade related to the highest section you passed. On several occasions I remember thinking that there was no way I could do the C level questions, but the A section was a doddle, so I felt really bad for the people who didn't at least have a crack at A.

...I remember a friend of mine who went to the local Tech college to do A-levels (having not done well enough to get into the 6th Form College). In her first week one of the lecturers told the class that they'd only be studying enough of the syllabs to get a grade C, because none of them would have the intelligence to do any better than that....

Talk about building up confidence and self-esteem!!!

Unhappily for that lecturer, my mate's dad was extremely high up in the local government education inspection department, and I believe that the lecturer was torn a new bung-hole very soon afterwards......

P.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Do S Levels still exist?

My school normally put those most likely to get an A grade at A level in for some S level exams too. These might or might not involve a larger syllabus - for Physics, it was just an extra paper with harder questions.

Do these still exist? The mentions of them on the Web all seem to be in the past - but that may just mean they aren't commonly taken now.

[Pert_UK]

6. Don't know....

I think that they did for some subjects when I did A-levels in around '93.

There was also a "Maths Extension Paper" at GCSE level for those who were very good at maths.

I waltzed through that paper, but found A-level maths so hard that I had to drop it and go out and do something less boring instead.

[LeftishBrit]

7. The government's higher education policies are badly planned

I think the whole idea of getting 50% of people into university is unreasonable. It's just a number taken from the air, rather than meeting the needs of either individuals or society. It just means that people, who would have done apprenticeships 30 years ago, now do some sort of course which has NEITHER the academic depth of what was previously regarded as a degree NOR the practical and vocational value of an apprenticeship.

I also think that these plans are likely to reduce equality, rather than increase it, because once 50% have some sort of university qualification, what happens to the other 50%? They are at risk of becoming the new 'underclass'.

If the government are really that concerned with increasing equality of educational opportunity, they should devote less attention and resources to getting 50% of 18-year-olds into university, and more to increasing opportunities for older adults to enter university as mature students.

[non sociopath skin]

8. Wonder if we Brits are a little "elitist" when it comes to Uni education?

Certainly, my old alma mater, Hull, was looked down upon scathingly by the older universities in the 60s as a "redbrick" while Universities like Keele and Lancaster offering a more progressive curriculum were seen as Mickey Mouse institutions.

Then, when the Polytechnics - offering good teaching and imaginative research - became universities, the columns of the upmarket newspapers and magazines were full of derision. Dumbing down. They'll be like AMERICAN universities, they said, offering degrees in hairdressing and surfing.

So are Unis for elites only? Should they cater only for public school swots (and a few carefully chosen Grammar School oiks) who wish to "read" Ancient Greek and Hard Sums?

Or are they institutions which can offer quality teaching in ANY area which people wish to study?

The Skin

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. They say that only about 50% take A levels

and it seems to me that there's no point going on to a 3 year academic course if you've already been struggling to get a couple of E grade A levels. So I think the amount of people going to university should always be a fair amount less than those taking A levels. Whatever name you have for the institution, a 'degree course' should mean roughly the same thing - 3 or 4 years with a high academic content.

Personally I'd like to see a massive increase in language teaching. It's practical, and easily testable (I'm sceptical of too much course work, in which it's too easy to copy or get help from others). It needn't be a 3 year course either - qualifications in conversational languages could be good for people to study for a year (or part time), and doing them in higher/further education gives a lot more choice than in school, where you're inevitably limited to a few languages.

[Pert_UK]

12. Yes.......and no...........and we probably should be..........

There is certainly an amount of snobbery amongst Britain's "educated classes", and when polytechnics became unis there was much wailing and grinding of teeth from the "establishment" who felt that "proper" unis would be devalued by being lumped in the same bucket as polys.

The odd thing was that the distinction was removed partly because there was such snobbery - Poly was seen as being for those who'd failed to achieve at A-level, when in actual fact many Polys offered brilliant, high-standard courses in a more effective way than the unis. Bringing polys under the same umbrella was supposed to remove that snobbery. In addition, many of the "redbrick" unis were actually offering higher standards of teaching than some of the more traditional unis, who were resting on their laurels and letting their tradition and history replace their educational standards.

However, there are now a number of fairly dodgy institutions that have been labelled as unis, and that does devalue a degree. Degrees are, by their very nature, an elitist thing - you only achieve one once you've proved you can achieve at a high level in GCSE, A-level and uni....At least in theory. In addition, degrees ought to only be available in "worthy" subjects - whether that subject is worthy due to its academic, traditional, vocational or other merit.

We have other sensible qualifications (HND, GNVQ etc.) that ought to mean that a 3 year course in hairdressing & surfing theory don't lead to degrees, unless, of course, we want degrees to become a laughing stock.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Well, I finally found what happened to S levels

but it took a lot of searching.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/alevels2003/story/0,13394,1144340,00.html

"It is possible that the days of the free-standing AEA are numbered anyway. In its interim review, published last summer, the 14-19 curriculum working group, headed by Mike Tomlinson, proposed a diploma system, the highest of which would integrate AEA-level material. But for now, there's a Catch-22 situation: until more schools offer the qualification, universities are unlikely to put much emphasis on it. And until universities put more emphasis on it, schools are unlikely to offer it as a matter of course.
...
The Department for Education and Skills and the exam regulator, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, are both positive about the AEA, each citing the introduction of AEAs in some additional subjects next year as evidence of its increasing popularity. But there are no immediate targets for increasing uptake: it is intended as an option only for the best of the best, after all. AEA entry rates are higher than those of the special paper, the extra qualification it replaced, which was declining in popularity and was offered predominantly by independent schools. The special paper had 4,452 entrants in 2001, its swansong year. In 2002, 6,841 entered for the first set of accredited AEAs, a figure that rose to 7,230 last year, according to Joint Council for General Qualifications data. It was a far from overwhelming take-up. More than 750,000 A-levels were taken last summer.

The AEA retained the special paper's grading system, with just under half of entrants receiving a merit or distinction, and the rest registering as unclassified. Unlike the special paper, which required extra preparation on top of an A-level curriculum, the AEA was designed to be accessible to all students, regardless of the resources their school possessed. Although universities are turning elsewhere to assess their applicants, the AEA does seem, as was hoped, to be stretching and stimulating the most able pupils - at least, those of the most able that have the opportunity to take it."

So, there are about 100 A levels taken for each AEA. I was at an independent school; I'd guess the total numbers taken in the whole year were 400 A levels, and 30 S levels. But since Milliband said 1 in 30 of all pupils (ie 1 in 15 of those taking A levels) get 3 As, you'd think they could use them to differentiate. But the article says not many universities pay attention to them. Oh well.

[fedsron2us]

11. All shall have prizes

It is the Alice in Wonderland world of British education. I don't know why they don't just abolish examinations, give everyone a nice gold medal at the end of their schooldays and save us all from the annual boredom festival that surrounds the publication of the A level results. Personally, I do not know whether the current generation of students are more stupid or brighter than those of 10, 20 or 30 years ago. You almost certainly will not find out from the bits of paper dished out by academia. I suspect that this has always been the case. Looking back over the centuries I am always amazed that at the number of the significant achievements in arts and science which were produced by people who were deemed failures by their schools or universities. Its almost as though formal education is designed to snuff out innovation and original thought.